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Mockingjay
By Suzanne Collins
Scholastic, Inc.
August 2010
400pp

The Short of It:

Although I enjoyed the series as a whole, this last book was a total letdown.

The Rest of It:

I imagine that the pressure to write a satisfying third installment to this series was great, but from the get-go the book sort of limps along with poor pacing and writing that was so forced in places that it actually made me wince.  I  mean really, what happened here?

In my opinion, I feel as if the author did not event attempt to deliver with this one. Why bother? People will buy it, good or bad just because of the popularity of the series itself. I am so angry over this book that I would have thrown it across the room had it not been on my Kindle.

Things that contributed to my dislike of the book:

-Katniss. I never got the “girl on fire” thing. To me, that title belongs to a heroine that blazes a path to victory. Katniss is SO not that. The constant self-deprecating, the wide-eyed innocence, etc. Girl!! Get a grip. Get it together and kick some ass!

-Gale. What happened to my lovely Gale? Bitterness! Although a lot of you may think differently, this is the only character that I feel was true in the end. Yeah, he was a bit more violent in this book and seemed to have a blatant disregard for human life, but I could see where he was coming from. His eyes were on the prize, so to speak and that prize was not Katniss. I can’t fault him for that. I  mean, how many times can a guy be turned down? My issue with him is that if he really wanted to end up with Katniss, he should have fought for it as he did for everything else.

-Peeta. Good lord. What the hell happened to Peeta? I know he was brainwashed but come on, even before the brainwashing he was…meh. He always seemed so juvenile to me and not as mature as some of the other characters. Supposedly he was a good-looking hunk with curls but it seemed as if he was sort of vacuous in my book.

-The suicide pill. So much mention of the pill yet no one took it. I sure wish some of them had.

-The entire book had this detached quality to it. Big things would happen but there would only be a little bit of description about it. Usually a startling image to send it home instead of a paragraph or two and then the chapter would predictably end with a shocking sentence like “…and then his legs blew off.”  Ugh.

-The pomp and circumstance. The costumes and make-up and base zero beauty were all too much for me. Perhaps if I thought they were going on a true hero I’d think differently, but for Katniss? Seemed like a waste of good lip gloss to me.

-Prim. Killing off Prim in a one-liner seemed like a pot shot to me. She was one of the few characters that seemed to have her act together.

-Finnick. Sort of the same feeling here. No future for the good ones I guess.

-Katniss deciding to have kids just because Peeta wanted them. What? So now you are breeding weak-minded, ambiguous little darlings to boot?

Overall, I found myself cringing throughout the book. The story itself, the plot to destroy the Capitol had promise but with such a weak crew carrying out the orders, it’s no wonder it fell apart.

When they put that crack-pot team of snipers into one special unit I couldn’t help but think they were leading the lambs to slaughter. I suppose at the end they succeeded in taking down the Capitol and that could be interpreted as success but I would have preferred a true battle of the wits instead of them putting on wigs and going undercover.

Source: Purchased for Duckie (my Kindle).